Philando Castile was a resident of Falcon Heights, Minnesota. ^[1] He attended University of Minnesota and was a graduate of Central High school in St. Paul, Minnesota. ^[1] Castile worked as a school cafeteria supervisor at J. J. Hill Montessori School. ^[1] A man dedicated to his work, he memorized all 500 students names and food allergies. Philando was greatly admired by students, teachers, and staff alike and was often described as "Mr. Rogers with Dreadlocks."

Castile would often make political statements on his Facebook profile. He once posted a photo of the Black Panthers accompanied with the Malcolm X quote “BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY”. He has another post that is a quote from 2pac:“They got money for wars but can’t feed the poor.” ^[1]

Minnesota court records show only misdemeanors and petty misdemeanors on Philando Castile’s record.

On July 6, 2016 Castile 's death was recorded on Facebook Live by his girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds. The incident occurred after Castile and his girlfriend were stopped by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota for a broken tail light.

According to Reynolds', Castile was “licensed to carry” and was “trying to get out his ID” and “he let the officer know he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet, and the officer then shot him.

The officer was Jeronimo Yanez.

Castile died shortly thereafter in a hospital.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's office ruled Castile's death a homicide and said he had sustained multiple gunshot wounds. The office reported that Castile died at 9:37 p.m. CDT in the emergency room of the Hennepin County Medical Center, about 20 minutes after being shot.

At one point in the video footage, an officer orders Reynolds to get on her knees and the sound of Reynolds being handcuffed can be heard.

Reynolds's phone falls onto the ground but continues recording, and an officer periodically yells, "Fuck!" The day following the shooting, Reynolds said that police had "treated me like a criminal... like it was my fault."

According to police and emergency audio of the aftermath obtained by the Star Tribune, at 9:06 p.m., Kauser called in the shooting, reporting: "Shots fired. Larpenteur and Fry." The dispatcher states, "Copy. You just heard it?" Yanez exclaims, "Code three!" Many officers then rush to the scene. One officer reports, "One adult female being taken into custody. Driver at gunpoint. Juvenile female, child, is with [another officer]. We need a couple other squads to block off intersections." Another officer called in, "All officers are good. One suspect that needs medics."

Reynolds said that officers had failed to check Castile for a pulse or to render first aid, and instead comforted the crying officer who fired the shots. Reynolds stated that Castile received no medical attention until paramedics arrived more than ten minutes after the shooting. A resident living across the street from the site of the shooting took a brief video showing an unidentified officer administering first aid on Castile before the arrival of paramedics.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's office ruled Castile's death a homicide and said that he had sustained multiple gunshot wounds. The office reported that Castile died at 9:37 p.m. CDT in the emergency room of the Hennepin County Medical Center, about 20 minutes after being shot.

The video uploaded by Reynolds to Facebook gained more than one million views before being removed overnight.

The video was restored to the social networking site about an hour after it was removed, with a graphic content warning. Facebook said that the video was initially taken down as a result of a technical glitch. By the afternoon following Castile's death, the video had been viewed nearly 2.5 million times on Facebook.

On July 14, Castile was buried following a funeral service at the Cathedral of Saint Paul, attended by "thousands of mourners, diverse in race, gender and age."

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) is the lead agency in charge of the investigation.

Reynolds, who was detained with Castile during the shooting around 9:00 p.m. CDT, was taken into custody and interrogated at a police station then released the following morning around 5:00 a.m.

The day after the fatal shooting, the St. Anthony Police Department identified the officer who fired the fatal shots as Yanez.

He and his partner Kauser were placed on paid administrative leave.

Under Minnesota state law, the names of carry permit holders are not public records, and state officials have thus not confirmed whether Castile had a permit. However, the Star Tribune , citing a source, confirmed that Castile held a valid permit, issued to him when he lived in Robbinsdale. Castile's family also provided to the media a copy of Castile's permit, issued to him in 2015 by Hennepin County Sheriff Richard W. Stanek.

Two days following the shooting, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi called for a "prompt and thorough" investigation into the shooting.

He said that he had not determined whether he would use a grand jury, but stated that if either a grand jury or prosecutors in his office determined that charges were appropriate, he would "prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law."

Choi also said, "We need to come together as a community, law enforcement included, to improve our practices and procedures so we don't experience any more of these tragedies ever again."

The BCA said that squad-car video and "several" other videos had been collected as evidence. St. Anthony police do not wear body cameras.

The reasonableness of the initial traffic stop, and the facts of what occurred in the 103 seconds of the stop (between the end of the pre-stop police dispatcher radio and the beginning of Reynolds' recording) were "hotly disputed" almost immediately after the shooting occurred.

On July 9, Yanez's attorney, Thomas Kelly of Minneapolis, said his client "reacted to the presence of that gun and the display of that gun" and that the shooting "had nothing to do with race.

This had everything to do with the presence of a gun."

In the video recorded shortly after the shooting, Reynolds said that the car was pulled over for a broken taillight.

Yanez' attorney Kelly stated following the shooting that his client stopped Castile in part because he resembled a suspect in an armed robbery that had taken place nearby four days earlier, and in part because of a broken taillight.

A Castile family attorney, Albert Goins, questioned this account, said that if Yanez actually thought Castile was a robbery suspect, the police would have made a "felony traffic stop" (involving "bringing the suspect out at gunpoint while officers are in a position of cover and having them lie on the ground until they can identify who that individual is") rather than an ordinary traffic stop (in which officers stop the car and ask the driver to produce documents).

Goins said, "Either [Castile] was a robbery suspect and [Yanez] didn't follow the procedures for a felony stop, or [Castile] was not a robbery suspect and [Yanez] shot a man because he stood at his window getting his information."

Kelly confirmed the authenticity of the pre-stop police audio, in which one officer reports that the driver resembled a recent robbery suspect due to his "wide-set nose."

The particular robbery to which the officer referred was unclear, but may have been a July 2 armed robbery at a local convenience store, in which the two suspects were "described as black men with shoulder-length or longer dreadlocks" with no information about estimated height, weight or ages.

Goins said, "I can't imagine that it's reasonable suspicion to make a stop because somebody had a broad nose."

Castile's mother Valerie Castile and her lawyer Glenda Hatchett called for the case to be referred to a special prosecutor and called for the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a federal investigation.

By 12:30 a.m. on July 7, about three hours after the shooting, protesters gathered at the scene, "peaceful but visibly angry".

More than 200 people were present.

After news of Castile's death spread, crowds of protestors gathered outside the Minnesota Governor's Residence in St. Paul, chanting Castile's name and demanding that Governor Mark Dayton make a statement. That night, demonstrations in St. Paul continued, remaining "peaceful but forceful".

Nekima Levy-Pounds, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, said that her group would request a federal investigation. She also called for an independent body to investigate the shooting, expressing skepticism with the state agency that is leading the investigation of the incident, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a division of the Department of Public Safety. NAACP president Cornell William Brooks said, "I'm waiting to hear the human outcry from Second Amendment defenders over [this incident]..."Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson said, "Philando Castile should be alive today". On July 8, over 1,000 demonstrators shut down Interstate 880 in Oakland, California, for several hours to protest Castile's shooting death and that of Alton Sterling the day before.

After a week of peaceful protests and vigils, violence between protesters and police in St. Paul broke out on July 9 and 10. Some 102 people were arrested and 21 officers (15 police officers and six Minnesota State Patrol officers) had been injured, one of them seriously. A group threw rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails at police and police used pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the crowd. The protesters caused Interstate 94 in between Minnesota State Highway 280 and downtown St. Paul to be closed. After they were dispersed from the highway, another group of protests took place at Dale and Grand Avenue. The violence was condemned by President Obama, Governor Dayton, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, and Police Chief Todd Axtell, who called for calm.

After the shooting, a number of activists established an encampment outside of the Governor's Residence.

On July 18, demonstrators cleared the encampment and moved off the road after police directed them to move, saying that they could continue to protest "as long as it was done on the sidewalk" and did not impede vehicle or pedestrian traffic.

The interactions between police and demonstrators were peaceful, and no arrests were made.

On July 19, 21 protesters—mostly members of the St. Paul and Minneapolis teachers' federations—were arrested willingly at a protest in Minneapolis after blocking a street in Minneapolis and refusing orders to disperse. The teachers marched from the Minneapolis Convention Center (where an American Federation of Teachers convention was being held) to the Nicollet Mall area; they were cited for misdemeanor public nuisance and released.

Later in the morning of July 7, Governor Dayton appeared outside his residence and said:

Dayton said he had requested an independent U.S. Department of Justice investigation and had spoken to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the matter. Dayton also commented, "Would this have happened if those passengers would have been white? I don’t think it would have." He promised to "do everything in my power to help protect the integrity" of the ongoing parallel state investigation "to ensure a proper and just outcome for all involved."

U.S. Representative Betty McCollum, Democrat of Minnesota, whose district includes the place where Castile was shot, also called for a Justice Department investigation, and U.S. Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, also called for a federal investigation, saying in a statement: "I am horrified that we are forced to confront yet another death of a young African-American man at the hands of law enforcement. And I am heartbroken for Philando's family and loved ones, whose son, brother, boyfriend, and nephew was taken from them last night." U.S. Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, denounced the "systematic targeting of African Americans and a systematic lack of accountability."

Speaking shortly after the shootings of Castile and Alton Sterling, President Barack Obama did not comment on the specific incidents, but called on the U.S. to "do better" and said that controversial incidents arising from the police use of force were "not isolated incidents" but rather were "symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system". Obama expressed "extraordinary appreciation and respect for the vast majority of police officers" and noted the difficult nature of the job. He stated, "When incidents like this occur, there's a big chunk of our citizenry that feels as if, because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same, and that hurts, and that should trouble all of us. This is not just a black issue, not just a Hispanic issue. This is an American issue that we all should care about." Obama telephoned Castile's mother to offer his condolences.

Following the shooting of Castile, Sterling, and police officers in Dallas, the Bahamian government, a Caribbean island nation with an over 90% citizenry of Afro-Bahamian origin, issued a travel advisory to its citizens in the United States, stating "[i]n particular young [Bahamian] males are asked to exercise extreme caution in affected cities in their interactions with the police. Do not be confrontational and cooperate". The specificity that young men use "extreme caution" when interacting with police and to be non-confrontational and cooperative were issued amid growing racial tensions.

Travel advisories were also issued by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, warning for caution in the U.S. due to ongoing violence and the U.S. "gun culture", and to avoid crowded areas, protests, and demonstrations as "civil disorder can result".